For the actual photograph, i took a black bacground and a jostick, lit the jostick and placed the camera on a tripod. I then used my flash off-camera with a snoot on, to focus the light on the smoke. The white one was achieved in PP, by converting the image to negative/inverted the colours, and then i used an adjustment brush to paint the colour onto the smoke.

With the white back round, it looks like it's in water (very nice), in black I will agree the colors pop out very nice... well done, and great discussion and opinion, that's how we can observe and comment each others photos... this forum is Aok